I Thought My Soul Would Rise And Fly
by GallifreyanDiamond
Summary: Anastasia, Missy's half-made/half adopted daughter, reflects on her new life and in a series of flirtations, heists, adventures and small-time rescue operations, attempts to find her new self, post-regeneration. WARNING: If descriptions of violence and emotional trauma bother you, don't read this. This story is told in a series of loosely connected chapters, with lots of flashbacks
1. Chapter 1

Have you ever had your limbs pulled off? No, wait. That's not right...

Have you ever had your limbs pulled off, one at a time, while simultaneously being burned alive? No! That's still not strong enough...

Have you ever been burned and pulled apart and drowned and poked with red-hot bits of iron and stabbed a thousand and one times, all at once? That's what it feels like to regenerate. That's how it felt for me, anyway.

It starts with a faint glow, eminating from the core of your broken body. At first, in your pain-induced delirium, you think maybe it's jaundice, that ailment that turns human infants yellow. Then the glow brightens, sharpens into a golden fire and your mind temporarily clears.

"What's happening?" You ask, turning your wild eyes to meet the icy gaze that's fixed on you in something that may have been wonder. (Whether the eyes belong to death or a normal person witnessing your pain, you don't know.)

"You're regenerating." A female voice answers calmly and something clicks in your head.

Yes, you're dying. Yes, you're going to burn, but then you'll be born again. You'll be different, but you'll live on. Sort of.

Then you think, that's not right: a person can't die and come back. That's stupid. That's been the plot of a zillion other stories, and it's not how yours is going to end.

But it is, replies your mental voice of reason, growing fainter by the moment. This is how your story ends and begins again and ends and begins again in an endless circle. You're going to wake up in a moment.

You can't think anymore after that, it hurts too much. All you can do is scream: let out one last wail to the world, a farewell song that you sing involuntarily to the land you're leaving behind. You scream for all the people you'll miss, all the places you'll never see, the romance you'll never have.

And you burn, from the inside out.

Then you don't know anything, just darkness and pain and the sound of your screaming. You don't know who you are: the word I has no meaning in that dark place within yourself, the place that shouldn't exist anymore.

As your voice of reason promised, though, you wake up. You keep your eyes closed for a moment, feeling the cloth you're lying on against your back.

You open your eyes. You sit up. You ask no one in particular, "Am I dead?"

"No." Comes the answer, from somewhere off to your right, and you climb out of the box-like contraption you were lying in.

But a few days later, after it's been explained to you at least four times, you ask again, "Am I dead?" This time though, you disagree with the answer you get. You realize, that yes, you are dead. The girl you used to be, she is dead, and the word I still has no meaning. You are no one now, just a beautiful ghost with porcelain skin and sapphire eyes. You're dead.

But you aren't. You still breathe, you still walk around, and smile and laugh and flirt. It doesn't mean anything though, because you don't who you are anymore. YOU, the person you knew and were just starting to be okay with, she's dead.


	2. Chapter 2

That's me over there. Hello! I'm the pretty one in the old photograph on the table, shown in black-and-white at the edge of a crowd, kissing a handsome young man with the little passion I possess.

That's me too, in the holographic image from 5123 (or maybe it was 5124), dark hair streaming out behind me, sapphire-blue eyes shining with amusement, kissing a girl this time. (That one was just a dare.)

And that's me again, in that old-fashioned oil-painting above the mantel, standing with a hand on my hip, gracing the painter with a Mona Lisa smile and a dress considered quite daring for Victorian times.

My name is Anastasia. No last name, although sometimes I go by Anastasia Saxon or Anastasia Tempus. It all depends on my mood. I'm technically only a year old. (It's been a year since regeneration that is.) That's pretty much all I know about myself, so that's all I'll tell you. It's astounding how much changed while I burned: my personality, some of my eating habits, my sense of beauty. You never know, though, what's going to remain the same. It's a lottery, this regeneration thing, a lottery you don't know if you've won. It makes you want to try new things though, because you never know which way you'll want to keep going. Kissing a girl, for example. Old me never would have done it. New me thinks it was fun, although I didn't like what I saw in her head.

Ah, telepathy. The true curse of the Time Lords. I read minds. I can initiate mental links and hold entire telepathic conversations, as long as I have physical contact with the recipient of my mental messages or in-mind prodding. Some people are easier to read than others, and it's not an exact science, but you must admit: it's pretty badass to be able to extract someone's deepest, darkest secrets with just a kiss.

Right now, I'm in Chicago, United States of America, 2015, planet Earth. I'm having coffee with a rich man in his forties, not a very nice man if I do say so myself. (I scanned him telepathically upon shaking his handddAnd read the news. Next year.)

"Aren't you a little young for this?" He asks, shifting his weight uncomfortably. I'd called him an hour ago by his reckoning: on the down-low, in need of money from a shadier character.

"No." I answer simply, wrapping my hands around the paper coffee cup to warm them.

It's cold. Snow flurries are swirling around us as we stand on the corner of a street I'd been down a thousand times before.

"How old are you?" He asks, looking me over with curiosity.

"Seventeen." I reply, and it might be the truth. I might be seventeen, but with all the time-travel I've been doing, I don't know.

"Why aren't you in school?" He asks. These are standard questions, I can answer them.

"It's more fun when I'm not." I say, grinning with mischief as though I've just told a secret, the kind of secret you tell a man you've just slept with.

The intimacy seems to warm him up a bit, because he steps a bit closer, and his eyes have taken on the appearance of a wolf's: hungry and hunting.

"How much do you want?" He asks, in regards to the cash.

But I'm done playing games. I have him where I want, anyway, and the girl in his basement ain't getting any younger. I lean in and kiss him. He steadies himself against me, but other than that, takes it quite well, considering he's being snogged by a girl he's known for about five minutes and maybe less.

Rule 1: Beauty is a blessing. Snogging is the best way to make someone's mental shields cease to exist, making their mind an open book.

"She's so pretty," he's thinking. "but she's so young... Lia in my basement... Lia's young... Lia's pretty... She screams a lot."

"Where is Lia?" I ask, moving thoughts around, looking for the answer.

"My basement I wanted to let her out but she kept trying to go away from me she can't go away from me I want to keep her I'm not done with her she's so beautiful you're so beautiful why am I letting a random girl kiss me I'm 42 I'm way too old for her Lia's twelve I'm too old for her too shut up no you shut up I didn't need a conscience anyway and god she's so beautiful..." And so on. Human minds are always talking: an endless rope of thoughts and words with emotions braided in.

"Where is she? What's the address?" I ask furiously, letting my anger bleed through, into his mind.

His thoughts grow more frantic, spiraling, unraveling into chaos I can only describe as fearful. I pick out the address with minor difficulty and make the scramble complete: merging memory and nightmare.

I break the kiss, and he falls back as though he's forgotten how to stand, his face crumpling into an expression of fear. He's not here, on this cold, grey street corner right now. He's in a hellish mindscape I made for him. I did what I could to put him in the place of the girl he took, the girl he was probably going to kill later in his paranoia, in his worry that I'd found her and would take her.

He dropped his coffee when the kiss turned fiery, and it's spilled all down my jeans. Lovely! (Not really, that was sarcasm. Do you know how hard it is to be sarcastic in writing? Almost as hard as getting Missy to apologize for something. Anyway.) I drop my cup in a dumpster, and head down the street, away from the madman, sitting on the pavement yet far away in his own mind.

His house isn't far. It takes about ten minutes and a few blocks to get there.

I don't bother with the front door. It's locked, and I don't have a way to scramble the keypad to unlock it. I would use my vortex manipulator, just materialize in the house, but this is New York, so that's out of the question.

There's a first-story window, at about chest-height. Shattering the window, that's my best bet. I pull off a boot. It's a black, leather boot, knee-high with a two-inch stiletto heel. I use the part that would normally encase my leg as a handle and wind up. I whip the shoe at the window, hitting the glass hard with the heel of the thing, causing it to fracture in a few places. One more swing, and m's fragments on the ground.

I put my shoe back on and pull myself onto the sill, brushing away the glass. Time Lord strength really is a blessing sometimes, I think, pulling myself into a kitchen. It's furnished in modern appliances and granite countertops.

Creeping through the kitchen, I realize that there was probably a better way to get in, one with more finnesse and less broken glass. "You mustn't break windows, darling. It's primitive." I hear my mother's voice in my head, exasperated as usual. I shove the thought of her aside.

The door near the refrigerator is made of dark wood. The lock is turned to the outside. Nothing complex, just an ordinary lock, the variety you don't need a key to open. Stupid rich idiot! He must have thought no one would connect him with the girl. He, obviously, can't read news articles from the future like I can. It crosses my mind vaguely that I'm the one that connects him with the girl, but I shove that thought aside as well. No, it can't be. Surely these humans will find out some other way.

I hurry down the stairs. Someone will be coming soon to investigate that broken window, and I want to be long gone before they get here.

The sight of the girl, sitting zip-tied to the chair nearly breaks my hearts. Her eyes are popping in fear, and her clothes are gone. It looks like she's been whipped or something along those lines, and I reckon those ties are done way too tight. There's a rag shoved in her mouth.

I remove the rag first, then reassure, "It's okay. I'm not going to hurt you. Stay still and I'll go get scissors to cut those off." I indicate the bindings.

She nods, and after rummaging through a kitchen drawer upstairs, I come down with scissors and cut her free.

I scramble her memories and leave her sitting in the chair, with the basement door open, wrapping her in a blanket from a bedroom. The police will be here soon. I want them to find her and take her home, that will make her feel safer. Her wounds are superficial, although she will have a few nasty scars.

I take a cab out of the city, using my last twenty to pay the driver. (I'll have to go steal something soon.)

Once he's turned a corner, I imput the coordinates of my flat into the vortex manipulator: 1964, London, UK, Earth. When traveling by vortex manipulator or TARDIS, it's best to land outside the City That Never Sleeps. I don't know why.

I materialize in the living room, blinking in the soft golden light of the place. It's warm and smells like my expensive perfume.

In the bathroom, I soothe away my tears with cool water from the tap. I run my fingers over my lips, scrubbing them with my fingertips and some dish soap as though that would wash away the taste of the awful man I'd kissed. It was necessary though, kissing that man. I needed to look in a well-guarded mind, to get the girl to safety.

That's what I do with my time. I don't chase aliens: that's what UNIT does, and they can't know about my existence. They'd lock me up and do who knows what to me, the Master's daughter. I can't alter big things in history either, that could cause some irreversible paradoxes. So I help the little people in any way I can: I do things no one will remember. And that makes things better, at least in my head. It's consolation: you can't change any big things, but you can do good things, little things.

After washing my face, I go into my bedroom, sitting on the bed and picking up the photograph I keep on the night table. That's me again, standing between them, the middle-aged man with crazy eyebrows and the middle-aged woman with madness in her eyes.

-/-

We stood on the Cliffs of Moor in Gallway, Ireland, 2015, planet Earth. The day was cloudy, the wind cold. Tourists milled around, taking pictures, throwing bits of paper into the sea just because they could, or doing whatever they did to spend their time. (I wasn't paying much attention, just watching the sea and listening to my "parents" bantering.) Normal human behavior filled the area, and I liked that: knowing people were okay in the backround. If they were worrying at all, it was over something small.

I was in a good mood. The Cliffs of Moor had been somewhere I'd been wanting to go, and today was the day Missy and the Doctor finally agreed to take me.

"Anastasia, dear. Come here, please. I want a picture." My mother demanded of me.

"What do you want a picture for?" The Doctor grumbled, "Your memory's photographic this time, isn't it?"

"Of course it is, Doctor. I just want a keepsake, and it's a lot easier to take one here than running about, saving worthless little planets and members of a species with teensy little brains and teensier lifespans. Anastasia." She snapped, when I lingered at the edge, looking down at the churning grey sea.

"They aren't worthless." The Doctor protested.

"In the middle." Was the Mistress's only response, pulling me close to her and glaring at the Doctor until with a sigh, he moved in on my other side.

The Doctor stood at my other side, intertwining his fingers through Missy's behind my back. It was something they did unconsciously, and it pulled a genuine smile from me.

A bald man held Missy's phone tightly, standing a foot or two away from us, facing us. It was obvious something about us together scared him, though I couldn't have guessed what. Even Missy was behaving, which was rare.

"I'm gonna take it on three." He said with a forced smile. "One. Two. Three."

And with a flash of LED light, we were frozen in time: Missy's childlike grin, one dark curl pulled out of place by the wind; the Doctor's face said he was cross, but his eyes betrayed him: full of amusement; and me again, my lips curled into the only genuine smile I've given any of the many photographers and painters over this past year.


End file.
